New road in NW to open soon

Bartram Park Boulevard to run parallel with U.S. 1

A new road offering Northwest St. Johns County motorists an alternate route to Interstate 95 is scheduled to open by February.

The road, Bartram Park Boulevard, will be a north-south connector between Racetrack Road and Duval County, running parallel with U.S. Highway 1. It leads to Old St. Augustine Road, just a half mile west of I-95 exit 335.

And as soon as work on Bartram Park Boulevard is complete, developers will start work to four-lane the east end of Racetrack Road.

The hope is that the new route will make the drive to and from Jacksonville easier for commuters in the Racetrack Road area, who currently must drive through busy Mandarin or sit in traffic jams on County Road 210 to get to work in the mornings.

"We believe this is going to be a major traffic alleviator when it's open," said Susan McDonald, an attorney representing Bartram Park, a 2,600 acre development that straddles the St. Johns-Duval county line.

Only 15 percent of its land is in St. Johns County.

McDonald presented plans to complete the project, which had been originally scheduled to be finished in June, at a recent Planning and Zoning Agency meeting. She also told the PZA that, when work wraps up on Bartram Park Boulevard, the development will begin four-laning Racetrack Road.

As part of their required traffic mitigation, Bartram Park developers will expand Racetrack from two to four lanes starting at Russell Sampson Road and continuing to Bartram Springs Parkway. That will include four-laning the I-95 flyover bridge on Racetrack.

McDonald said the project should take 30 months, longer than the originally-projected 20-month construction time.

Jason Cleghorn, a county planner, said Bartram Park will contain 367 homes, 44,830 square feet of office space and 37,084 square feet of retail space in St. Johns County.

The community was originally scheduled to be completed in 2015, but McDonald said the Development of Regional Impact would like to extend the completion date to 2025.

The PZA approved all of the requested schedule changes, which will appear for final approval on the December agenda of the St. Johns County Commission for final approval.